white chocolate chips (or white Candiquik which we used and worked just fine).

canned pumpkin puree

cream cheese, softened

gingersnap cookie crumbs (I beat the crap out of them in a ziploc).

graham cracker crumbs (see note above re: crap, beating out of)

powdered sugar

orange zest (I skipped this – not worth the effort)

ground cinnamon

Pinch of salt

Pretty much melt a bit of the white chocolate mix that melted portion with everything else other than a small amount of graham cracker crumbs set aside, put in fridge to set, roll into balls, dip in remaining melted white chocolate and sprinkle remaining crumbs atop.

Nothing much to this. Take the wet ingredients plus sugar and throw it in a bowl and mix it up. Throw the rest of the ingredients in another bowl and mix ’em around. Add bowl #2 to bowl #1 and mix it again. Split between two loaf pans and bake at 350 for 50 minutes (or 58 if you have my underachieving oven). The recipe said 3 7×3 loaf pans but I don’t even know what that is so I used standard sized 9x5x3 (or thereabouts) and made 2 instead of 3.

My “helper” getting in on the action. He tasted the “yummy salt” (spices), and got a bit too much ginger and was none too happy about it.

Although the recipe didn’t call for it, because mine would be consumed mostly by a 1 year old, a 3 year old, and a young at heart 42 year old, I added chocolate chips. Which were promptly picked out one at a time by my sous chef for immediate consumption.

Two pans o’ pumpkin bread, ready to bake.

Two pans o’ Pumpkin Bread, fully baked.

One pan that grew so fond of it’s pumpkin flavored companion it couldn’t let go altogether.

Which at least gave us something to munch while the rest cooled…

Luckily the other came out perfectly – until a certain someone tried to pick a chocolate chip out of it.

Bake for 15 minutes. Reduce temperature to 350 degrees F.; bake for 40 to 50 minutes or until knife inserted near center comes out clean. Cool on wire rack for 2 hours. Serve immediately or refrigerate. (Do not freeze as this will cause the crust to separate from the filling.)

I like this recipe because it takes about 10 minutes max (pre-oven). Short enough that I can make it while my little monster eats breakfast in his highchair (which is what I did both times I made it).

I used my Ipod to refer back to the recipe because it was easier than my usual method of bringing the laptop to the kitchen and took up less counter space:

A pretty pic of my dry ingredients, pre-mixing…

Mixing the pumpkin with the liquid ingredients…

I had a game plan to avoid screwups since I had done a previous test run. See, the first time I made this, I overfilled the pie crust and in my attempt to transfer it to the oven spilled everywhere (with such a mess that I didn’t even think to photograph, the hubs and I were just trying to mop up pumpkin slop from all over the kitchen.

SO…this time, the crust went into the oven FIRST to avoid a messy transfer.

But we know what happens to the best laid plans:

The pie still turned out ok though!

Those weird blemishes were gone by the next day (Thanksgiving) when I served it too. Not the prettiest due to the burnt crust from where the filling spilled, but overall not bad, and it was delicious, not a sliver left!